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So nominations for the 2018 awards associated with the World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, Worldcon 76, have opened up, and a lot of people have been posting and tweeting about what works they created in 2017 that are award-eligible this year.

I hadn’t bothered doing anything similar, since when the issue came up I couldn’t think offhand of anything I’d done last year that was eligible. Between injury (early in 2017) and illness (in the late summer and fall) I got a lot less done than was originally planned. Yet others have apparently been paying attention to this issue on my behalf. (For which I thank them!)

First of all: the 2017 e-publication* of Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal means that the Young Wizards series is once again eligible for Hugo consideration. In 2017 this would have been because of the 2016 publication of Games Wizards Play,which made the series eligible for the Best Series one-time “special” Hugo awarded by Worldcon 75 in Helsinki. That, however, was a different award from the new Best Series Hugo. (A distinction that apparently may make a difference for last year’s award finalists, if this year’s Hugo Administrator decides to rule out their nomination this year. But that’s hardly an issue for me.)

Meanwhile, another question remains (it came up in a Twitter conversation with an old acquaintance last week, and as soon as I can find it again, I’ll link to it.) Is Interim Errantry: On Ordeal eligible this year for the not-yet-named Best Young Adult Novel (Not A Hugo) Award?

I have no idea, because despite an afternoon spent hunting (probably in the wrong places) I can’t find the rules. I’ll get back to everybody on this when I have a moment…

That said: on the off chance that the book is eligible for this (and because it’s definitely eligible for the other), if you’re interested in reading it as part of your pre-award consideration, then here’s a little help. If you go over to the Ebooks Direct store and put a copy of IE2: OO in your shopping basket (or use the widget at the bottom of this post) and enter the discount code FREEORDEAL on checkout, you can download the book gratis. The “how to purchase” walkthrough at the store will show you where to enter the code.

And I hope you enjoy the book!

*It’ll be out in paperback at Amazon during Spring 2018, if anybody was wondering.

2018 Hugo Award eligibility: for those who were asking was last modified: February 12th, 2018 by Diane Duane

The NME box sets at the Ebooks Direct store have been selling at a promotional 50% discount for two years plus, now… but unfortunately all good things must come to an end. While I’ve been happy to hold the discount in place as long as I could — particularly with an eye to people reading the series as part of what’s been going on at Mark Reads — this deep a discount is no longer really sustainable. With the ongoing introduction of the new updated versions of the NMEs (you can see the covers above), the long-delayed price rise is imminent.

So this is just a heads up for those of you who may be interested: if you want to pick up nine Young Wizards books for $19.99 — which is sort of $2.22 per ebook — the next week-and-a-bit will be your last chance.

Here’s the deal, though. Buy now, and within days you’ll be getting the new updated versions to replace the older ones, at no extra cost.

Here’s how it works. The new, reformatted, smartened-up versions of the NMEs (more info on them and what’s different about them here) have begun going up to past purchasers in the last week. Those of you who have already acquired box sets should now have had the first update, in which the new versions of So You Want To Be A Wizard, Deep Wizardry and High Wizardrywere pushed out to buyers by the store. There’ll be two more updates to the box set package — the second adding new versions of books 4, 5 and 6, and the third with books 7, 8 and 9. Once all the updated files are in the store — which will be between February 14th and 20th — the price will go up at least 20%. (And it might have to be more. I’m still crunching the numbers.) But you’ll have gotten all the books at the old price. To be in the system to be updated to the new editions, though, you need to purchase before the prices change: meaning in the next 7-10 days.

…So there you go. Let me take a moment here to thank those of you who’ve previously gone out of your way to avail yourselves of the YW NME discount in the past. I’m sorry it can’t stay in place any longer: but I wanted to give everybody who might be interested one last chance to take advantage of it. Click here to get your set at the old discounted price. (Or if you prefer, use the Shopify widget to the right to put a box set into an Ebooks Direct store shopping cart.)

Oh, and one last thing: for those of you who don’t have PayPal accounts, or don’t want PayPal handling your credit card info, or both — we’ve installed a separate credit card processor (Stripe) that means if you don’t want to work with PayPal any more, you don’t have to. Yay!

Anyway, thanks again for your business, all. 🙂

At Ebooks Direct: last chance to get the updated 9-book Young Wizards New Millennium Editions at the present discounted price was last modified: February 11th, 2018 by Diane Duane

The delay on this has been due to the rights for the first two books still being held by their original US publisher. They couldn’t be reverted until sales fell below a certain point. A month or so ago it transpired that they’d finally crossed that threshold, so reversion proceedings could begin… and those are now complete. I’ve taken the opportunity, while the paperwork was being sorted out, to go over the text of both of the first two books and make some textual corrections. Nothing major — just some tidying to bring the copy more into line with my present writing style.

Right now the Feline Wizards ebooks are only available at Ebooks Direct. It’ll take a month or so for the major online retailers to be notified about the reversion by the previous publishers, and for those editions to be pulled. Once this has happened, early in the New Year the (slightly) revised ebooks will be made available through Amazon and other online sources. Watch this space, or the Ebooks Direct news blog, for more information.

For those of you interested in an omnibus edition of the ebooks: there isn’t one yet, as I’m still looking into the pros and cons. (Among other things: I have to spend some time crunching the numbers to see whether omnibus publication of ebiijs is actually making sense in terms of sales at this point.)

New paperback editions of all three books, with unified covers, will also appear via Amazon’s CreateSpace arm some time between next week and mid-January. (I have to think a little more about what kind of covers are going to work best at Amazon. The new EBD ebook covers are nice enough, but they aren’t necessarily the ones that will work best for the paperbacks.) The prospect of hardcovers is still hanging in the air, as Lulu has proven itself annoyingly difficult to deal with and I haven’t yet had time to adequately evaluate other options.

Thanks again for your patience, everybody! I’ve been waiting a while to get all these reverted to me, and it’s so satisfying to have them sorted out at last.

One other note: if you’re a subscriber to the original Big Meow subscription project who hasn’t yet done so, please use this link to add your contact data to our MailChimp contact list. We’re in the process of reaching out to all original subscribers to make sure they’ve received all their subscription materials. Thanks in advance for your help!

The full Feline Wizards series now at Ebooks Direct was last modified: December 12th, 2017 by Diane Duane

For those of you who may have copies of this already, just a heads-up for you. We’re giving YW: Lifeboats a new cover so that it’ll no longer look identical to Interim Errantry. (That will also have a slightly spruced-up version of its cover applied to it later this month. Those of you who have IE will already have Lifeboats as part of it.)

The store will shortly start pushing out download links for the new, re-covered ebook to its previous purchasers. There’s nothing you need to do but click on the URL in the notification email when it arrives in your mailbox: it’ll take you to the page with the URL for downloading the file. Please note that these download links have the same five-day expiry time as regular purchases. If you miss the download window, naturally we’ll refresh your link if you email us with your order info. But try not to miss it if you can, yeah? Thanking You. 🙂

If you don’t have a copy of Lifeboats: as part of the Ebooks DirectSummer Reading Sale, we’re dropping its price by half for a few weeks. So now’s a good time to grab it if you feel so inclined. Want to know what happens between A Wizard of Mars and Games Wizards Play?This does. 110,000 words of it.

Thanks, all!

“Young Wizards: Lifeboats”: files with new covers on their way was last modified: August 8th, 2017 by Diane Duane

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…you’re tidying up some paperwork and you stumble across a (1999) printout of a novel proposal that you had completely forgotten about, including outlining, notes, and detailed timelining for the six main characters…

(here’s the text if the image gives you trouble)

LIGHTNING IN THE CUP tells the story of the deadly culmination of a three-hundred year war between two mighty nations, and the end of the world…all caused for the amusement of an angry god and goddess.

The world is in its Renaissance: art, literature and magic are flowering as never since the great Triple Empire was destroyed in mysterious catastrophe, three thousand years before. Poised at either side of the great continent which surrounds the Central Sea are the nations VOROSHEN and MIROKH, provinces of the old Empire, now finally grown into their pre-eminence as rulers of the known world. Their ancient rivalry—Voroshen is the more populous nation, Mirokh the greater naval power, controlling the Sea—has been flowering, too. For the better part of the last millennium, they have practiced war against one another as another kind of artform, a violent and lucrative one, using the armies and territories of their various client nations as their battleground.

Now this graceful, amused, habitual aggression is growing into something more deadly. Each country has begun to feel it has the right to be the most powerful in the world. The old mindset, which would have seen life as not worth living without the existence of the essential, noble enemy, is passing away. The new rulers coming to power—a less poetic, more opportunistic lot—believe that it would be better if there was only one “greatest country”. And the only way to manage that, each side now feels, is by wholesale destruction of the other….

People on both sides—powerful lords, wizards, politicians—are beginning to realize that the means may be within their grasp. Mastery of the theory and technology of magic is growing by leaps and bounds, fostered by the patronage of Voroshent and Mirokhel lords for great theoretical sorcerers like ARDAN and ELIEGRI. Things which would have seemed great wonders even a hundred years ago—cloudcastles, soaring-ships, scorchfire—have become commonplace: magic has been turned to the service of man in peace and war, and makes the exchequers of both countries fat by its taxation and control. Riches and prosperity are more widespread than ever: on the surface, at least, because of magic, peace reigns in both the Great Lands.

But each nation secretly is looking to magic for the answer to the question of how to get rid of its great rival…and one of them is on the brink of finding it. Mirokh’s genius-mage ARDAN has learned of the existence of a sorcerous relic so potent that, properly altered and manipulated, it could cause the earth to open and swallow a whole country down to ruin. Eagerly, Mirokh’s lords send an expedition into the Debatable Lands to find this thing and bring it home, for their glory and the final destruction of their enemies.

What none of the Mirokhel suspect is why this relic has now been found.

…And then things get interesting.

Note to self: import into Scrivener. Add to ToDoIst project list. Schedule for more research after completion of YW#11 draft. Possible scheduling: spring/summer 2018.

Please note that if you’ve bought anything from Ebooks Direct between last year’s Black Friday weekend and early April 2017, the email that came with your download links contains a discount code that will give you a one-time 30% discount on a purchase of the Interim Errantry: On Ordeal ebook. So check your past download-link emails for more information.

If you need info on how to use discount codes on our site, please click on the “How to purchase” menu item in the left-hand column at Ebooks Direct, or click on this link for details.

Buttons for the individual works will appear below momentarily. (Might take them a few moments to load.) Thanks for your patience!

“Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal” and “On Ordeal: Ronan Nolan Jnr” available now! was last modified: June 23rd, 2017 by Diane Duane

An eligible work for this special award is a multi-volume science fiction or fantasy story, unified by elements such as plot, characters, setting, and presentation, which has appeared in at least three volumes consisting of a total of at least 240,000 words by the close of the calendar year 2016, at least one volume of which was published in 2016.

So the Young Wizards series is eligible to be nominated for the 2017 Best Series Hugo Award. If you’re a Hugo nominator (and / or possibly a Young Wizards fan), I cordially invite you to consider nominating the series — long praised both by critics and by a cross-generational audience who’ve grown up with the Young Wizards, and are now introducing them to a new young readership as the series continues to grow in depth and complexity..

Members of Worldcon 75, and also of MidAmeriCon 2 (the 2016 Worldcon) and Worldcon 76 (the 2018 Worldcon), will have the right to nominate up to five candidates in each of the Hugo categories. Nominations will close on 2017-03-18 06:59 UTC (at 11:59 pm Pacific Daylight Time on 17 March).

Those who joined one of the qualifying conventions before the start of January will have already received their unique personalised link to make nominations. (31 January was the cutoff date to join the qualifying conventions in order to nominate; Worldcon 75 members who join after that date will be able to vote on the Final Ballot when it is announced, but will not have nomination rights.) You can also vote by post using a paper ballot: please download and print the A4-size paper ballot (PDF, 160 kB) or the letter-size paper ballot (PDF, 160 kB). Postal ballots must also be received by the same deadline.

The final ballot will be announced in April, and voting for the Hugo Awards will continue until July. Only Worldcon 75 members can vote on the final ballot. Because Worldcon 75 is in the first half of August, it is likely that the deadline for Hugo votes will be in mid-July.

Whether or not you intend to nominate the Young Wizards series, thanks in advance for your support of one of SF’s oldest and most prestigious awards: and thanks for your time and consideration!

2017 Hugo Eligibility and the Young Wizards Series was last modified: March 13th, 2017 by Diane Duane

Now that the holiday season has rolled around again, we’ve promoted the post to the front page of the YW:IE site once more, and extended the range of the calendar a little; every page at YW:IE now displays a Santa Tab on the right-hand side. Just click on it to get the Advent calendar to pop up. Please bear in mind that if you haven’t read HLATB, the amount of sense these calendar entries / chunks of dialogue make to you is likely to vary widely.

Also: as a sample for those who might be interested, under the cut on this page you’ll find the full text of day 3, “Ritual Practices”: a discussion between a wizard’s mom and the Master of the Crossings Intercontinual Gating Facility regarding the logistics and technology of cleaning up during and after parties.

Enjoy!

(FYI: How Lovely Are Thy Branches is one of the three texts included in Interim Errantry. If you have that already, no need to acquire HLATB.)

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So it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m more busy concentrating on cooking, and on what I have to be thankful for, than I want to be on the Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales period. So I’ve thrown the switch early, and everything in the Ebooks Direct store is now 60% off. This includes our most popular products, such as the Young Wizards New Millennium Edition 9-volume box sets. (At around $2 per book, not at all a bad deal.) As always, everything in our store is DRM-free and can be moved from device to device as you please: some items come with multi-format bundles usable across more than once kind of device. And as always, we’ll happily replace your downloads free of charge if you lose them due to device failure or change of platform.

But there’s more!* On Cyber Monday, the newest volume of interstitial Young Wizards writing —Interim Errantry 2: On Ordeal — will appear at the store. IE2 contains some 90,000 words of new storytelling, for the first time sharing the details of how three of the Young Wizards universe’s favorite wizards came through their Ordeals to their power. (Presubscribers to the project: please note that the completed version will be pushed out to you automatically by the ebook store’s fulfillment system on Monday.)

But if you’re not a presubscriber and you want to pick up a copy of the new book at a bargain price right away, all you have to do is make a purchase at Ebooks Direct between today and Monday. In the email that brings you your download links, you’ll also find a special one-use-only discount code that will give you 30% off the purchase price of Interim Errantry 2. That book will not be available at a sale price for the foreseeable future to anyone but our Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend purchasers and members of the Ebooks Direct mailing list. (IE2 will be exclusively available from Ebooks Direct for the next 90 days and will therefore not be sold on any other online platform until late February of 2017.)

So scroll down and have a rummage through our inventory (please bear with it if it takes a moment to load), see if there’s something that interests you, and pick it up at a bargain price… along with savings on the new Interim Errantry 2!

*Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. — DD

Black Friday and Cyber Monday at Ebooks Direct was last modified: November 25th, 2016 by Diane Duane

Also, there’s a special offer on: Amazon customers who’ve purchased the Harcourt ebook edition of GWP are being offered a discount on the audiobook. So if you fall into this category, don’t delay — grab one now!

GAMES WIZARDS PLAY Audiobook out now! was last modified: November 18th, 2016 by Diane Duane

Over the past few months, on and off, I’ve been reorganizing the household’s records-keeping system (which has all too often devolved into variants of the Put It In A Shoebox And Forget About It school of behavior: better than nothing, I guess, but not really useful when you need to put your hand on one specific thing in a hurry. As has happened occasionally this last year).

So… redoing the filing. Woo woo: how glamorous this mad gay whirl of a writer’s life can become. (Gah.)

Yet one of the more interesting side effects of this situation is that unusual things turn up.

Like this.

The formatting of the page and the material it’s typed on tell me that this came out of David Gerrold’s first-generation “printer” — an IBM Selectric cabled to his original NorthStar computer — back when I was still working for him just after the publication of The Door Into Fire. So: around 1979/1980ish. The story is not complete, but I know how it ends. I can finish it now. 🙂

…Or this. (Coincidentally in the same universe, though older still):

It was 1973 when I drew and watercolored this map — so, still in nursing school. (You can see I was still in my heavily-Tolkien-influenced period.) And somewhat to my astonishment, in the file folder behind that map is a hundred and forty-one pages of Middle Kingdoms fiction that has never been seen by anyone but me: a 30,000+ word novella, complete.

And every time I ran across one of these things I thought, “There must be some organized way to share this stuff with people.”

(And make a little extra living money off it, whispers the un-shut-uppable businesswoman-voice in the background.)

And then the idea came creeping in.

There are a lot of creative people I respect who’ve joined Patreon. Why not me? It’s worth running the idea up the flagpole, at least.

The idea is that contributions to the Patreon from my side would look like:

Snippets from already-announced works that will be traditionally published: as in Young Wizards book 11 (still untitled) or other new out-of-genre works

A weekly podcast from wherever (I’ve been looking at PodOMatic and it seems like it might be a good fit for me: also it integrates directly with Patreon, which is useful).

And other stuff I haven’t thought of yet

Rewards would include things like, well, for example — at the higher end of rewards — that map up there. I’m not sentimental about keeping originals. Copies work fine for me. But who knows, someone else might like to have the thing I actually made. I’m still looking around to see what the less-expensive level rewards would look like. (For example: high quality reproductions of similar works. Etc etc.)

So here’s the deal. Would you join my Patreon if I started one? Please use the polling form / device here to signal what you think. And please be serious with me here: if you wouldn’t be able to contribute from the outset, don’t answer the poll as if you would.

Finally, everyone should understand this. I intend to make this work from my end, but if the output in time and energy is not supported by the income at the contributor end, I’ll kill the Patreon sooner rather than later. All our time is precious, and energy is doubly so; and if mine turns out not to be producing an acceptable return at this end, then that’ll be that.

Okay? Let me know what you think. And thank you!

ETA: Here’s Patreon’s quick-explanation video.

I’ve been thinking about a Patreon. What do you think? was last modified: November 12th, 2016 by Diane Duane

The Middle Kingdoms books have been needing a home of their own for a while… so now they’ve got one. The site isn’t absolutely perfect as yet, and not all the desired bells and whistles have been hung on it as yet, but there’s no reason not to let folks in to kick the tires.

One of the first things to announce is that, finally — for those of you who’ve been asking — all the “Tale of the Five” / “Door Into…” books are now in paperback at Amazon! You can find the links in the sidebar on each book’s page at MiddleKingdoms.com. The Amazon/Kindle versions of the second and third books aren’t available just yet, but they will be within a couple/few days. And anyway, if you want a Kindle-friendly .mobi file in any of the main Kindle types, we’ve got those at Ebooks Direct. Again, check the sidebar in each book’s page.

Also, there’s now a dedicated “update” page for a certain project that’s been hanging fire (cough, cough) for some years now. Those of you interested in the progress of the fourth and final book in the Tale of the Five sequence are invited to bookmark it and watch the developments during 2017.

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So it’s dark and the power’s been off for hours, and I’m sitting downstairs reading fanfic by candlelight, and the wind is howling whooo, whooo outside, blowing leaves and twigs and stuff around so that sometimes they whack into the windows, and it’s all very atmospheric, and I think It’s a good thing I’m not of a Nervous Disposition – as the commercials used to have it – because a night like this could seriously freak you out if you were.

(Especially since there’s haunted ground just up the road. Or ground that’s supposed to be haunted. I’ve never had any problems with it, and I’ve walked past it all alone in the dead of night lots of times, and never had so much as a peep out of it. But we have neighbors who wouldn’t walk past that particular area after dark for any money.)

Anyway. So it’s dark and the candleflames are fluttering a bit (the house is prone to drafts in this weather, more so than usual when the wind is going by at 80kph or thereabouts) and there’s no telling when the power will come on again, and in the midst of reading I look away from the iPad for a moment, a bit bored, and a few seconds later a voice speaks to me and says:

CHARACTER: I want to be in the next book.

And I kind of rub my face and go “Oh great.” Because of all nights when I don’t feel like having one of these conversations, tonight probably tops the list. I had about fifteen things that needed doing on the big computer, and they’re all impossible with the power out, and as a result I am cranky.

(You must understand that the dialogue that follow plays itself out in-head over the course of no more than about fifteen seconds. Also that I can’t discuss the identity of the character in question right now. Or indeed later.)

DD: What?

CHARACTER: I’m not wild about where you left me in this last one.

DD: I think you were in a pretty good place, actually.

CHARACTER: I don’t. I think you need to put me in the next one. I could be useful.

DD: I don’t really see how that’s the case, because [REDACTED] and it’s not exactly in your specialty area.

CHARACTER: But if you put me in there you’ll figure something out.

DD: See, that’s not how it works. There’s this outline, and in it are all the things that’re going to happen, and you’re not really part of that through line. Partly because your skillset wouldn’t particularly contribute to the dynamic, which in terms of the cast of characters is very tight in book 11 because [REDACTED]. And partly because I don’t just put characters into a story on the off chance that they’ll contribute something somehow!

CHARACTER: In my case you should anyway.

DD (rubs eyes, which are playing her up somewhat due to the crap lighting): This is just one of those goofball ideas that hits you late at night and turns out to have no merit in the light of day.

CHARACTER: You’ll never know, though, if you don’t make a note of it so that you can examine it in the light of day.

DD: (goes looking for pen and paper, tries to make a note, can barely see to write, sighs in annoyed acquiescence and turns on the laptop to make a note there. Rather like this.) You’re a real pain in the ass, you know that?

CHARACTER: And whose fault is that? You created me.

DD: (annoyed, because to this argument there’s no easily available rejoinder: rubs forehead) Remind me again why I’m even in this business?

EXTREMELY LARGE CHORUS OF CHARACTERS, INCLUDING PEOPLE WITH FLAMING SWORDS AND SIMILAR WEAPONS, NUMEROUS DRAGONS, MANY ALIENS, VARIOUS WHALES, CATS AND TEENAGERS, ASSORTED FOLKS IN STARFLEET UNIFORM, A BUNCH OF CARTOON AND COMICS CHARACTERS, AND ENDLESS OTHERS: Because you’re too lazy to dig ditches and too chicken to rob banks.

DD: Yeah, thanks loads. And as for you –

CHARACTER: Think about it.

DD: All right, all right, I’ll think about it.

(soft click as the lights come back on as if in reward for good behavior)

DD: (hides eyes) Oh, feck.

…and outside, the wind starts to die down…

DD: (EYEROLL)

(To the person who commented “They’ve got minds of their own sometimes, haven’t they?” …No, they’ve got minds of my own. Which is what makes it both so infuriating and so funny.) 🙂

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A wizard’s Ordeal is intensely personal, and sometimes intensely dangerous… or not. Each Ordeal is tailored to the wizard who may pass it — or fail to pass. Each one is in some ways diagnostic of the innermost nature of the wizard who embraces the challenge offered them by the Powers that Be.

This is the Ordeal of Mamvish fsh Wimsih, newborn child of a saurian species trapped by its own Choice on a world that the Lone Power has cruelly punished for rejecting it.

Vish may just be a hatchling, but she knows that the world is badly broken, and needs to be put right. To make this happen she begins a quest that will crisscross her huge, bleak planet and finally bring her face to face with the powers that rule her world. And as for the Power she will not meet... the tale of how that happened (or did not) is here revealed.

Every now and then over at the Tumblr I wind up chatting with people about various aspects of writing, the writing business, and technique — usually under the “writing advice” tag. Some weeks back (don’t ask me when, it’s been busy around here) a question came up about outlining, and various people suggested that they’d like to see what one of my outlines looked like. So I made a note to myself to find an outline at some point and post it for those who might be interested.

Today I was going through one of the smaller portable expansion drives we keep around the house for temporary data storage, with an eye to cleaning it out so it could be used in updating my old laptop to run Windows 7. While I was sorting through the directories (and again and again muttering “Why the hell have I been hanging onto this…?!”) I came across what appears below. This is the outline for the Star Trek novels Swordhunt (later subdivided into Swordhuntand Honor Blade) and The Empty Chair.

This is an example of one of the ways I outline. It’s not a “beat outline,” in which every scene is laid out in book-chronological order and with considerable detail about action and sometimes even dialogue. I suppose it could be considered more of a “pitch outline”, intended to indicate both a story’s background and its foreground issues and action in broad strokes. It’s also intended for an editor already thoroughly familiar with my writing style and the way I handle a given license and its characters (in this case Star Trek).

One of the reasons I allowed myself to submit something so (relatively) relaxed in format is that I knew my editors — first John Ordover and then Marco Palmieri — were confident enough about what I would do with the actual novels to not mind an outline of this kind. It does however begin with a brief recap of previous work in the series for the benefit of anybody in the Trek offices (either at the book end in NY, or the licensing-and-approvals end in LA and elsewhere) who might need to be brought up to speed on the background; as Trek editors in general and the faithful and long-suffering Paula Block (routine overseer-of-things on the licensing side) always have so much other work on their plates that a reminder of the details might be welcome.

The outline weighs in at just under 3700 words, or about eight single-spaced 8.5″ x 11″ pages. Needless to say, if you have not read the Rihannsu sequence of Trek novels and you’re planning to, and you don’t want to be spoiled, then you should avoid reading any further….

I wasn’t sure what to call it at first, but that’s what it is: something a little different at the Young Wizards end of things, falling under the “Interim Errantry” rubric.

The plan at the moment is for there to be three of these works (but I’m not absolutely ruling out more). The first one is ready now: 45,000 words of the backstory of a character who’s turned into a (slightly) unexpected favorite among Young Wizards readers.

Once upon a time there was a Prince who wanted just one thing: to be a wizard…

Only child of the union of two great wizardly lines of the planet Wellakh, heir to a position and lifestyle considered equivalent to royalty by the people of his half-ravaged world, Roshaun ke Nelaid lives what most Wellakhit would mistake for a life of unfettered pleasure and privilege, moving apparently casually through the corridors of power and seemingly being given instantly whatever he desires.

But the one thing he wants most is the one thing not all his family’s wealth and influence can give him. What he longs for more than anything (well, almost anything) is something it’s beginning to look as if he can never have.

In the wake of an unexpectedly terrifying day in his family life, Rho discovers that he’s wrong…

The first tryptich of Ordeals will be complete by mid-September. Meanwhile, this should do to be going on with.

New in the Young Wizards universe, a prose miniseries: ON ORDEAL was last modified: August 3rd, 2016 by Diane Duane

Since the progress of things at Mark Reads has now taken us well past the point where this material is spoilery, I thought people might like to see a copy of my working map for Deep Wizardry, from which the map appearing in the original book was derived.

Information about this area was hard to come by in the early 1980s, and it was just as well that I was then often working on the book out of the Frederick Lewis Allen (writers’) room in the main branch of the New York Public Library, as its stacks were one of the few places where it was possible to lay hands on the research data from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute that was then laying bare the geography of the area around the Sohm Abyssal Plain. No existing map combined all the data I needed, so I wound up drawing this myself and then later adapting it in a slightly different format for the hardcover.